Pataki: Marcellus Shale Creates Jobs

Former New York Governor George E. Pataki, who briefly flirted with a presidential run this year, before realizing the voters weren’t flirting back, penned an editorial in the Daily News this morning supporting drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation.
The three-term Republican has positioned himself as an energy expert, and had planned on making natural gas extraction a central theme of a presidential bid.
Here’s the article:

The benefits of these natural gas reserves for our economy would be enormous, even transformational. Domestic natural gas waiting to be unlocked will give us the opportunity to reduce our dependence on foreign oil while making our air cleaner through the use of more natural gas in electric power generation and transportation.
Then there’s this not-insignificant point: The development of the Marcellus Shale formation means jobs and investment throughout New York. Right now, these jobs are being created directly across the border in Pennsylvania. According to a recent report by the Pennsylvania Labor and Industry Department, from October 2009 through March 2010 a staggering 48,000 new jobs were created by the industry and its related supply chain.
New York needs jobs. The April 2011 state jobs report estimates 259,400 upstaters are currently unemployed. An influx of even half those jobs created in Pennsylvania would make a big difference to New York families. And these are good jobs; the same Pennsylvania report shows that the average wage last year for jobs in the basic gas industry was $69,995, while the average wage in support industries — such as construction, steel and engineering — was $63,967.

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